Fin's Electromagnetic Synchronization suddenly blazed with new warnings, his enhanced perception painting the battlefield in layers of approaching threats that made his stomach drop like a stone through water. The five hundred signatures he'd initially detected weren't the full picture, they were merely the vanguard. More contacts bloomed across his awareness from every cardinal direction, electromagnetic pulses converging on the city like fingers closing around prey.

"We've got a serious problem!" Fin shouted, his voice cracking with genuine alarm as the numbers continued to climb. "They're not just coming from the forest, they're surrounding us! East, west, south, every direction is lighting up with contacts!"

He watched in mounting horror as the count escalated past six hundred, then seven, then eight. The signatures merged into an almost solid wall of hostile intent, individual beasts becoming indistinguishable from the greater mass. His breath came faster as realization crashed over him like a cold wave.

"Don't hold anything back!" he bellowed to the team, abandoning any pretense of calm tactical assessment. "Full power from the start, we might take casualties on this one! I'm reading almost a thousand hostiles, all Mid Tier Three minimum!"

The first beast, a massive direwolf charged across the killing ground with reckless abandon. Its paw came down directly on one of Fin's carefully planted Plasma Compression Cores. For a single frozen heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the world exploded.

The detonation erupted with the fury of a miniature star achieving supernova, a sphere of superheated plasma expanding outward at speeds that made the eye struggle to track. The direwolf simply ceased to exist, its matter converted to component atoms in a microsecond. But the destruction didn't stop there, the blast wave caught three more beasts in its radius, their bodies torn apart in a cascade of gore and vaporized flesh that painted the ground in abstract patterns of violence.

That single explosion acted like a starter pistol for the apocalypse. Every beast within visual range suddenly surged forward as one, a living tsunami of fur and fangs and murderous intent that crashed toward the walls from all directions. More cores detonated in rapid succession, boom, boom, BOOM, each blast creating temporary suns and sent bodies flying like ragdolls caught in hurricanes.

The chain reaction of explosions painted the battlefield in strobing light, each detonation briefly illuminating the scope of what they faced. Hundreds of beasts, all converging with single-minded purpose. This was coordinated and utterly terrifying.

Triana's voice cut through the thunder of explosions, her tone carrying a kind of awed horror. "This isn't a siege anymore. This is straight-up war. Total war."

Vance responded with a wordless war cry that seemed to erupt from somewhere deep in his chest, a sound of pure primal fury that echoed off the walls and made even the beasts hesitate momentarily.

Onrio's thin frame suddenly blazed with power as he activated a skill Fin had never seen before. Geometric patterns of light erupted around him, expanding outward to touch Triana, Vance, Daryl, and Harbour. The moment the light made contact, their bodies seemed to sharpen somehow, movements becoming crisper and faster, muscles bulging with enhanced strength that transcended their normal capabilities.

"Why the hell didn't you use that before?" Fin demanded, noticing with surprise that he'd been deliberately excluded from the enhancement.

Onrio's voice was tight with strain from channeling so much power. "Week-long cooldown, and I can only buff four allies maximum. You're clearly managing fine without it, so I prioritized those who need it most!"

Fin filed that information away with growing curiosity. That was the second skill he'd encountered with an explicit cooldown mechanic. The pattern suggested something fundamental about how certain high-level abilities were balanced by the System itself.

Daryl didn't waste time with further discussion. His enhanced speed carried him across the battlements in a blur, heading toward the eastern wall where the electromagnetic signatures were densest out of the new targets. Harbour and Onrio peeled off toward the west.

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Triana turned to Fin, her expression carrying desperation. "Can you hold this area by yourself?"

In response, Fin activated Lightning Armament at full power. Electricity erupted across his entire body. The lightning condensed and shaped itself into sleek armor that wrapped around him like a second skin, a gleaming shell of controlled plasma. Intricate patterns raced across the surface, and a helm formed last, closing over his face with the finality of a visor dropping before battle.

"Yes," Fin said simply, his voice echoing slightly through the energy construct.

Triana nodded once, then took off toward the southern wall with explosive speed, Vance's massive form trailing behind her like a loyal shadow.

Fin was alone on the northern battlements now, facing down a tide of beasts that seemed to have no end. He summoned Plasma Bow instead, the weapon materializing in his left hand.

He pulled back the bowstring, and an arrow of crackling plasma formed automatically, its core burning white-hot enough to leave afterimages. But he didn't release it immediately. Instead, he began channeling his Unmaking concept into the projectile, feeling that familiar void-hungry edge awaken within the weapon. The arrow began to darken at its center.

One second. Two. Three. The arrow shuddered in his grip, reality warping around it as competing forces of creation and destruction achieved violent equilibrium. Four seconds. Five. His core ached with the strain of channeling so much conceptual power through a relatively fragile construct, but he held steady, letting the power build to critical mass.

When he finally released the bowstring, the arrow didn't fly so much as erase the space between him and its target. It struck the center of the beast horde with apocalyptic force, and approximately twenty percent of the entire northern wave simply ceased to exist. The Unmaking concept spread from the point of impact in an expanding sphere of erasure, beasts dissolving into fundamental nothingness. The crater left behind was even more perfect than the one from his gauntlet strike, a hemispherical void where matter had been convinced it never existed.

Fin staggered slightly, feeling his core pulse with a sharp ache that went beyond simple mana depletion. This was something different, a warning, perhaps, that he was pushing boundaries he shouldn't be testing. The thought crossed his mind that maybe wielding a Legendary concept before reaching Tier Three was fundamentally dangerous, that his soul might be straining under forces it wasn't yet equipped to properly channel.

But there was no time to dwell on theoretical dangers. The remaining beasts were nearly at the walls.

Lightning Armament shifted in response to his will, the energy reshaping itself with fluid grace. A chain formed around his right forearm, links made of pure crackling electricity that somehow maintained solidity despite being essentially weaponized plasma. At the end of that chain, a curved blade materialized, its edge sharp enough to split atoms and wreathed in the same lightning that composed the links.

A kusarigama. The weapon brought immediate memories flooding back, sparring with Kellan in what felt like another lifetime, learning to let his imagination go wild in combat and to stop limiting himself. That had been only months ago, but given everything that had happened since, the transformation, the exile, his skill shattering, the constant brush with death, it might as well have been decades.

Fin allowed himself a small smile behind his helm at the memory. Kellan's straightforward approach to teaching. Simpler times.

The smile faded as the first beasts reached the wall's base. Time for nostalgia had expired.

Fin leaped from the battlements without hesitation, his lightning-clad form plummeting toward the mass of snarling, snapping predators below. The kusarigama's chain whipped behind him like a comet's tail, the blade singing through the air with a sound like tearing silk.

He hit the ground in the center of the remaining horde like a meteor of concentrated violence. The blade found the throat of the nearest direwolf before the creature even registered his presence, opening it in a spray of arterial blood that hissed where it met his superheated armor. The chain followed through, wrapping around another beast's legs and yanking hard enough to snap bone.

Then he was moving, truly moving, and the battlefield became a brutal tornado of lightning and flowing death. The kusarigama was perfect for this kind of close-quarters chaos, the blade for precision strikes, the chain for control and area denial. He spun and struck and pulled and released in a flowing dance where every movement led naturally into the next.

A direbear reared up to crush him with massive paws. The chain wrapped around one foreleg while the blade opened its throat. A pack of direwolves tried to coordinate an attack from multiple angles. The chain became a whirling barrier that kept them at bay while lightning discharged from every link, cooking flesh wherever it made contact. Fin moved through forms, each technique adapted on the fly.

Blood and ash filled the air. The kusarigama sang its song of death. And Fin danced at the center of it all, a storm given human form, proving that sometimes the best defense was overwhelming, relentless offense.

The war had come to Crie. And Fin intended to make absolutely certain the city survived to see another dawn.

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